


Dust in the Wind

by SegaBarrett



Category: Jesus Christ Superstar - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 21:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Judas is sure the end is coming, but he wants to try and stop it.





	Dust in the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [joy_shines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joy_shines/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own JCS, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title from the Kansas song.
> 
> Warning: Some quick casual sexism on Judas' part.

Judas could hear nothing but crickets in the night. They were camped outside of Bethany, close enough to Jerusalem to see it in the distance. See the lights at least. He could picture a hundred tiny faces behind a hundred windows, all looking out at the same lights.

He wondered what it would have been like to have been born in the city. To be in the middle of everything, to feel connected. To be a minnow, swimming upstream and always having a sense of where to go… he was probably mixing metaphors there but he didn’t care. It was late, and he was more tired than he wanted to admit. 

It was getting chilly at night. It always did this time of year, but in the day the heat was blistering to the point that Judas’ hands always turned bright red by nightfall. He was sweating, too, in his head and on his arms. He laid against the ground, quiet, looking up at the sky and letting out a mumble. 

He’d try and talk to him again in the morning. That was the only way to do it, to try and talk sense to him all over again. 

But what could he say to a man who seemed to think he knew everything? It wasn’t like Jesus had ever been particularly modest about setting the tone for the group, but recently he had refused more and more to let Judas in at all. How was he supposed to know what he was thinking?

Judas would boil over with resentment that he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He would just end up getting mad and Jesus would just end up getting distant and then the cycle would start all over again. Nothing would be solved. 

He rolled over. He couldn’t sleep no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t fight the feeling that something was very, very wrong and if he didn’t solve it right this minute, he may not have another chance.

But the camp slept. There was nothing he could do about that but watch the sun go down all over again.

***

“Maybe I was wrong about her.” Judas figured that to get a little, maybe he needed to give a little.

Jesus didn’t respond and take the bait, and Judas fell back a few paces. He always had to walk behind. 

“Maybe I could give her a chance,” Judas continued.

He still didn’t respond, and Judas wondered if he was even listening at all. Maybe he was off deep in thought. It wasn’t as if he would tell him what about – head in the clouds, miles away… every cliché that Judas could bring to mind. 

Not that he would tell him any of that. As frustrated as he was with his… friend? His leader? What could he call him exactly? He wanted him to like him. He wanted to be on his good side.

So, he needed to figure out what the other man wanted to hear. The key.

But it was hard to come up with rhetorical advice for the man who knew everything. Better, Jesus would say (if he was giving the advice himself and not the object of it) to speak from the heart, to be honest and true.

It was much harder for Judas when he didn’t really know what the truth was. His mind was a jumbled mess of tied up string, where it was impossible to figure out where one ended and the other began. Where the knots were impossible to unwind; better just to cut them down the middle. 

“Okay, so maybe I still don’t like her. You need to focus on the cause, not on people like her,” Judas said finally. At least, if he talked to him and told the truth, Jesus would talk to him. He wouldn’t just close him out. Or maybe it was only closing out in Judas’ head. 

He could remember his parents not talking to each other for days, only passing by each other in the house as they went about errands. They would act as if the person they had married was nothing more than a cloud of dust blowing by.

He didn’t want to be like that. If he was with these people forever – and it seemed like he would need to be with these people forever, all of them – then he would need to learn to talk. Maybe that was what Jesus was trying to tell him.

He opened his mouth to ask, but Peter came up to Jesus then, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him back away. Judas didn’t catch what the other Apostle asked; he didn’t care, anyway, Peter was always asking him questions about what would happen after, about what was happening now, and never listening to any of the answers.

He walked back to the tent and crouched down, finding that his feet were aching. They’d been walking most of these last few days, feet in sandals scraping over rocks and twigs. That could, he considered, have contributed to his bad mood.

He could hear the sound of crunching behind him, leaves and twigs and dirt in the clearing.

Judas turned around to see Mary Magdalene walking. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him, looking around with an awkward, nervous look.

“Still up?” Judas asked, because it was the first thing that popped into his head.

“It’s hard to sleep,” she told him, crouching down a little to rest her elbow against her knee. She made every motion look effortless – that was part of why he hated her. It was like she was always in the middle of some kind of little dance, only for her own benefit. Good for her to tell everyone to stay focused and calm; she wouldn’t be the first one hauled out if, no, when, this all went horribly wrong. 

She would just go back to whatever she had had before. This was all that Judas had. 

***

He found himself looking at her hair, more than he wanted to. It had a weird way of floating in the wind that was distracting.

The last thing anyone around here needed right now were any more distractions. 

He would say something to win him over, he just had to find the right words and put the all into the right sentence. All the words rang out, spun around his head in loops until he was sure that they would strangle him.

He wasn’t known for being a man with a loss for words. He usually opened his mouth and everything tumbled out, right or wrong.

Judas felt a tap on his shoulder and he jumped, arms flailing out, fists clenched and thrust outward, his knuckled going just past Mary’s face.

“Shit,” he grumbled. “I didn’t see you there. You shouldn’t have snuck up on me.”

What the hell was she thinking, walking up behind him as if she knew him? Coming into his personal space. He could smell her; he could see and hear her. She was hovering into him, crowding him. 

“I thought you heard me,” she replied, crossing her arms and looking more offended than afraid. 

“What do you want?” he fired back. “This isn’t your part of the camp.” He looked her over as if he was going to catch something from her. A little voice in his head tried to gently nudge him to be kind, but it was harder than it looked when he had just a visceral reaction. Her hands all over him, that was what flickered in his mind, her hands over his chest as she pulled him in and told him that everything was going to be okay because she was here.  
Even though everything was definitely not going to be okay.

Everything was going to burn up in flames, to cinders.

“I wanted to come talk to you. Listen, I know that you hate me and I wish I actually understood why. But he’s going through a lot and he doesn’t need this from you right now.” Judas stared at her as he detected a catch in her throat. Was the woman really going to start crying? That was the type of thing they did all the time, after all. His mother was always crying about something or other and how it was all falling apart.

Sure, it was all falling apart, but there was no need for anyone to get teary-eyed about it. He wanted to tell her to stop right there and leave it alone already. 

“Unless you want to help, why don’t you get out of the way?” Judas fired back. “You’re happy as a clam to watch him get us all killed, so long as he gives you what you want. What do you want, anyway?”

“I want him to be happy. I want the same as you.”

Judas crossed his arms. Did he want Jesus to be happy, or did he just want him to be alive?

“So give him some space,” Judas said, “You’re always hanging on him, crowding him.”

The woman laughed.

“I could say the same about you. Come on… it’s pretty obvious how you feel, Judas. You’re very obvious – and very jealous. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. I have a feeling they’re not going to be thrilled to see us in Jerusalem.”

Maybe, Judas considered, she knew more than she let on sometimes.

“Tell me about it… If we don’t all end up dead, it will have been a success.”

***

Judas had lost track of him, which he knew couldn’t be a good sign. If Jesus wasn’t in sight, then he was probably doing something again like openly mocking Caiaphas to his face, or telling off literally everyone and informing them they had no idea what they were talking about.

There wasn’t any way that could go wrong, of course.

But he was tired, and the ground felt inviting in a way he didn’t totally understand. He sat down and laid back, wondering if when he opened them everything would make sense again. It had to. 

He didn’t mean to fall asleep, really he didn’t, but it was hard to keep his eyes open once he was laying down. 

Judas didn’t realize that any time had passed at all until he felt the touch on his shoulder, a force pushing him off his side and back on to his back.

“What do you want?” he grumbled, not sure who could be touching him. People weren’t allowed to touch him; that was his rule – who didn’t know the rules?

“Judas, shh,” Mary’s voice, quiet and insistent and urgent.

He sat up.

“What is it?” Judas asked again. 

“He went and chased everyone out of the temple… I’m scared… I… Judas… I don’t know what to do.”

He brushed some dirt off of his pants and turned his head towards her, leaning in.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

Judas pressed a kiss against her lips, haphazard, because it seemed to be the only thing left in his head to do. Such a dumb thing, a silly and baseless thing, but a thing he had never done before.

It felt better than he had expected.

Her hand fled to his face, stroking him and mumbling something against his neck, now, and when had she climbed into his lap? Was this the kind of thing she did all the time?

She made it look, feel, effortless… 

“We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” Judas muttered. It has been dawning on him since they had set off, every step marking a last step, every single moment one of the last he would ever have. They were going to kill them all (if they weren’t careful).

Jesus didn’t know the meaning of careful; and neither did Judas, it seemed. Because all of this was very, very dangerous.

They were a tumble of clothing and kissing and the smell of sweat, and it was a wonder that no one else woke up. (They could sleep through a tornado, Judas thought disdainfully).

He felt her hands over his sides, on his back – he was going to twist, he was going to break, he was…

They were done. Laying side by side, staring up at the sky. There were stars out. When had God created so many stars for them to look at?

“That was a mistake,” Mary told him, her head tilting towards him slowly. “You know you’re not…”

Not him, was the unspoken end. And Judas knew.

“You’re not, either,” he said, still staring up at the sky.

He would be up there, soon. Returning to dust. 

Or maybe there was a way to forestall it. If he waited until she fell asleep… Maybe there was still a way.


End file.
